Foster Lomas’ modern Isle of Man retreat shortlisted for RIBA House of the Year

-

The Sartfell Retreat nestles into a shallow hillside on the Isle of Man, its traditional drystone walls forming a continuity with the surrounding landscape and implying a strong sense of permanence and place. In fact, this is a house by the London-based practice Foster Lomas, the result of a lengthy planning process and an even more in-depth and extensive programme of restoring and enhancing the existing landscape and biodiversity. 

The Retreat stands alongside an existing building, known locally as Cloud 9, and is set slightly lower down the hill and connected by a modest glazed link. Cloud 9 was included in the project and completely refurbished, inside and out, while the new building is defined by its thick drystone walls – up to 620mm in depth – which shield the interior from the landscape. A long run of ribbon windows in the main living space are set deep in the stonework, minimising solar gain but allowing low winter sun to flood into the space.

Foster Lomas has gone to enormous lengths to combine traditional material design with meticulous finishings, and the frameless glass offers up an unobstructed view of the island’s landscape. The external walls were constructed by hand, with not a stone out of place. Long-term weathering will see the house blend into the landscape, as plants and lichens merge with the stone. 

A library, known as the ‘Knowledge Centre’, spans the house’s three levels. Photography: Edmund Sumner

Inside, the windows are juxtaposed with polished concrete floors and walls, a modest, minimal grey that lets the exterior light bounce around and change the character and quality of the space throughout the day and across the seasons. The main circulation space forms the heart of the Retreat. A perforated metal staircase winds up through three levels, flanked by a vertical library.

The staircase doubles as a ventilation stack, helping the house achieve its zero-carbon consumption, together with thick walls, green roofs and use of triple glazing, along with the thermal benefits of being set into the restored hillside. In contrast to the floors and walls, the ceiling is an intricate network of exposed joists, their intersecting angles adding a touch of geometric dynamism to the impeccably refined spaces. 

The construction has gone hand in hand with re-shaping and restoring the surrounding landscape, returning levels of biodiversity through the green roofs and off-grid systems for fresh and recycled water. This private nature reserve will be further enhanced by the addition of a new Visitors’ Centre and artist’s studio, also designed by Foster Lomas, due to be completed at the turn of the next decade. §



from CommaFeed - Real Time Trends Network https://ift.tt/2qUVdqI
via IFTTT

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Takeaways from the outcry over Dior’s Johnny Depp perfume ad: Tuesday Wake-Up Call

-
Welcome to Ad Age’s Wake-Up Call, our daily roundup of advertising, marketing, media and digital news. You can sign up to get an audio version of this briefing on your Alexa device. Dior pulls a perfume ad starring Johnny Depp Yet another luxury brand just had to backtrack after a culturally insensitive move. Dior on Friday pulled an ad for its “Sauvage” perfume, as Business of Fashion reports ; the spot starred Johnny Depp playing guitar in the desert while a Native American dancer, Canku One Star, performed in traditional dress. The company portrayed the spot as “an authentic journey deep into the Native American soul.” But the brand was quickly accused of cultural appropriation. Critics seemed most troubled by the juxtaposition of Native American imagery with the word "Sauvage"—which means “wild” in French, but which also evokes the history of labeling indigenous groups as “savages.”  LVMH-owned Parfums Christian Dior had apparently tried to proceed cautiously. It coo
Read more

When the coronavirus infodemic strikes

-
Image
Social media sites are stepping up their efforts in the war against misinformation… specifically, the coronavirus/COVID-19 infodemic . There’s a seemingly endless stream of potentially dangerous misinformation flying around online related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and that could have fatal results. It’s boomtown in fake-news land riding high on the wave of people being left with their tech devices 24/7. I myself regularly see everything posted online from “hand gel is an immunizer” (nope) and “children can’t be affected” (not true) to “UK rules mean domestic abuse survivors have to stay with their abusive spouse” (absolutely not true at all and hugely dangerous to claim).  We even have engineers being spat on thanks to 5G conspiracy theories potentially resulting in transmission of coronavirus . Turns out a global pandemic is a lightning rod for pushing people to conspiracy theories galore, to the extent that some folks have to go hunting for guides to wean their family members a
Read more

Taurus Project stealer now spreading via malvertising campaign

-
Image
For the past several months, Taurus Project—a relatively new stealer that appeared in the spring of 2020 —has been distributed via malspam campaigns targeting users in the United States . The macro-laced documents spawn a PowerShell script that invokes certutil to run an autoit script ultimately responsible for downloading the Taurus binary. Taurus was originally built as a fork by the developer behind Predator the thief . It boasts many of the same capabilities as Predator the thief, namely the ability to steal credentials from browsers, FTP, VPN, and email clients as well as cryptocurrency wallets. Starting in late August, we began noticing large malvertising campaigns , including, in particular, one campaign that we dubbed Malsmoke that distributes Smoke Loader. During the past few days we observed a new infection pushing the Taurus stealer. Campaign scope Like the other malvertising campaigns we covered, this latest one is also targeting visitors to adult sites. Victims are mos
Read more